This coming week I will be playing the first of several end-of-the-year events for St. Andrew’s Priory School, starting with Ascension Day, the school’s traditional Founders Day event. St. Andrew’s Priory School was founded on Ascension Day, May 30, 1867, by Queen Emma, wife of King Kamehameha IV, and Mother Priscilla Lydia Sellon of the… Read More Getting back to “normal” — almost!
If you asked the average man or woman in the street, what are the odds that they would know what a pipe organ is? Not likely, I would guess, and I can’t count the number of people who walked into the Lutheran Church of Honolulu and exclaimed to me, “That’s a really big PIANO!” (Uh,… Read More Pipe organs in the news!
From time to time, I have mentioned the name of my Swiss friend, Vreni Griffith. I first noticed her unusual name when I used to stick name labels on our music mailings for the Lutheran Church of Honolulu—that was probably in the early 90s. I later found out “Vreni” was a shortened version of “Varena”… Read More ¡Muchísimas gracias!
If she had not told me, tonight might never have happened. What I am talking about was the conversation I had with Cynthia Scheinert in 2003, former fifth grade home room teacher of Joey Fala, who told me about his fascination, no, his obsession with the organ so much that every school assignment, whether it… Read More A kid who had a dream …
Oh Carl! I don’t know how many times I said these two words over my lifetime—way more than several hundred, maybe even thousands of times. I said “Oh, Carl!” mostly in moments of exasperation, or resignation, but sometimes even in times of joy and elation. Or even to get his attention— “Oh, Carl, can you… Read More Oh, Carl!
Nobody listens to CDs anymore. My son actually said these words to me nine years ago, when we were remodeling our condo and had a contractor build us a huge entertainment cabinet which had storage for an astounding 32 custom-built shelves for compact disc storage, in addition to display shelves for our glassware collection, and… Read More End of an era
There was an extensive interview with my former student, Joey Fala, in the current issue of the Iolani Bulletin, the publication of Iolani School where I was the Chapel Organist for twenty years and where I met Joey when he was in fifth grade. Take a look at the Tag Cloud—either in the column to… Read More Still making news!
I was pleasantly surprised to open today’s Star-Advertiser newspaper to find a gigantic interview with Sophia Stark, this year’s winner of the Miss Hawaii Volunteer Teen. I am going to repost the article here, and add that Sophia and her brother Raphael, have studied organ with me for four years but have had to take… Read More My organ student!
On Easter Day in the middle of carrying food and decorations down to the 8th floor recreation deck for my Easter brunch, I received a phone call in the elevator. It was Kathy Hallman, daughter of organist Nyle Hallman, who said to me, “Kathy, you’re probably in the middle of Easter cooking, but Mom and… Read More Perfect pitch not needed
In another move to normalcy, this week I’m hosting Jason Anderson and Sal Salinas as houseguests. You’ll recall that Jason is the second director of the Compline Choir in Seattle, succeeding Peter Hallock in 2009, our former business partner in our music publishing business, Ionian Arts. Jason wrote his doctoral dissertation on “The Life and… Read More Post-Easter houseguests